Selling Out

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In his post Don’t Throw Away Your One Strength, Jim used in-person retailers to make an important point to live entertainment marketers: You’ve got to make your strength pay off.For stores, this one strength is the ability to see and try the actual product (and the ability to just go ahead and buy it right then and there).According to Small Business Trends, retail customers still like to “get physical” when it comes to shopping despite the growth of mobile...

Gramophones and trombones may not sound like ingredients for one of the hottest events in New York City, but they are. At the Jazz Age Lawn Party, organizer Michael Arenella brings together classic elements of the 1920s for a fabulous soiree that even Gatsby would be jealous of.The party started thanks to Arenella's love of jazz music and the style of the '20s. His enthusiasm for the era is clear in this Fast Company interview and also is key...

We're polling a select group of Goldstar members about some of the most common live event etiquette conundrums -- and we need your help!As a thank you, we’re entering you into a drawing for an Apple Watch Sport (42mm)!Questions include things like:• Is texting ever OK during a live theatrical event? • When a theater's packed, who gets the armrest? • When squeezing into a row of seats, which side of your body should face those you're scooting past: the "butt-side"...

Think things like recess, coloring books or summer camp are only for kids? Not anymore. There's a new movement among adults to incorporate more playtime into their routines, largely due to studies that show various health benefits to play but also because, heck, it's fun.PSFK.com recently reported on a series of best-selling coloring books for adults, which allow you to create a work of art -- no drawing skills required (the designs are decidedly more chic than your children's...

James Fallows' article "Nice Downtowns: How Did They Get That Way?" in The Atlantic brings to mind Jim's posts about ecosystem, specifically NYC's Broadway and L.A.'s Theatre Row ecosystems. Fallows writes:"It's tempting, if you haven't seen the varied stages of this process, to imagine that some cities just 'naturally' have attractive and successful downtowns, and others just don't happen to. ... But in every city we've visited with a good downtown, we've heard accounts of the long, deliberate process...

Jim frequently talks about how live entertainment enriches people's lives. "People go to the game [or event] because they want to be a witness to it," he writes in his post, Why Do People Go to Live Events in the First Place? He continues: "They want to be there when it happened. They want to have an unmediated experience of something special (hopefully) and, 10 years of selling millions of tickets to millions of people has taught me, they want...

Jordan Roth's name has come up a few times on Selling Out. In one post, Jim wrote about what he calls The Roth Doctrine. It's something Jim pulled from an article that quoted Roth. Jim explains: "I mention it because there’s something in the article that I find myself repeating and emphasizing to venues, producers and marketers all of the time, and which I now call the Roth Doctrine.Here’s the quote: 'What I’m aiming for, and what I think the...

Do you remember field trips?Nothing could make my 8-year-old self more excited than knowing that, instead of a normal school day, we were going someplace special. If you, too, liked that feeling (or if you never got to experience it), then I would love to see you at TEDxBroadway. It’s a field trip day, but designed for your adult self.If you’ve never been, it’s a day full of presentations, but not like any you’d expect at a regular conference....

Happy #TBT. To celebrate, we’re sharing an oldie-but-goodie post from Jim. You Can Tell When Something's Alive and When It's Not The other day, we were evaluating a long list of websites as potential Goldstar partners. Not a thrilling conversation, but something came out of it that I thought I’d share. On this list were the names of sites, the number of visits those sites get every month and their traffic rank. Pretty standard stuff. When you make a list like that,...

In his post, Anybody Up for a New Golden Age? I’ve Got an Idea …, Jim asked why live entertainment doesn't create a “series” or a “franchise” more often — unlike movies and books, which “have learned that if you create something that can live beyond a single production, you can do very well and build a very large fan base.” He continued: So, why then is live entertainment basically one and done? If we love the premise, the setting,...